Research Of Chinese Myth Subject Oil Paintings

Mythological-theme oil painting accounts for a large proportion of the history of western oil painting. For China, the oil painting is kind of foreign species, the creative themes are more or less influenced by western. Thus there are lots of mythological-theme oil painting in China. Myths are creations of human ancestors, even the historical witness of their lives and thoughts. Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945, Germany), the philosopher, once said:"It seems like that art is linked together with the myth in its infancy. It never completely get rid of the influence and power of mythology and religion, even in the later development process.’The article preliminarily discussed the mythology themes of oil paintings from China and Greek, analyzed the content,characteristics and developments process of the two nations, as well as the its impact towards each nations, and finally get the conclusion that it is practical way to research the art and create the oil painting art from the perspective of cultural origin.Oil painting came to China in modern times, how to integrate the foreign art expression way with China’s culture which has several thousand years history, to make it contains western cultural development elements and the essences of China cultural, is the main purposes of this paper. Since the western artists created painting works, which are based on mythology theme, are came down the ages, we can also use the art language of oil painting to express mythology system. However, oil painting is the European tradition, is not China’s, the introduction of oil painting is a historical choice, is the demands of art development, and we hope that it can have more essence of the Chinese characters during the development in China.